13 February 2012

Trawling through the full sales figures for each car broken down by fleet and retail for every model on sale in 2011 is either your worst nightmare or, in my case, a stato’s delight.

The reason? It’s a mine of interesting (well I think so) facts. And the main themes are explored in the latest issue of Auto Retail Bulletin (which you can trial for free here, if you’re not already a member of ARN).

However, there were also a few oddities that didn’t make the analysis in Bulletin, which think are worth pointing out here.

Having looked at the figures I am left wondering why some manufacturers bother selling cars in the D-segment.

In the year that saw Renault drop the Laguna, due to poor sales of 2536 (and only 1115 were to retail buyers), several other Laguna competitors sold fewer.

Citroen registered just 1273 C5s in 2011, of which 457 were retail sales.
Honda registered 1836 Accords last year, with 626 going to retail buyers.
Lexus IS200 registered 1860, of which 1020 were to retail customers.

However, there were also surprises the other way round too with Saab registering an impressive 3526 9-3s with just under 50% being retail sales.

The D-segment isn’t going to get any easier either. Not only are retail buyers increasingly opting for other markets, such as crossovers; there are new arrivals too. My bet is that cars such as the Hyundai i40 and Kia Optima are more likely to attract the few retail customers there are so perhaps it wouldn’t be a surprise if more manufacturers followed Renault.

Tristan Young

I’d love to hear your views on this. Drop me a line at tristan@auto-retail.com

Tags: Accord, C5, D-segment, family cars, Figures, IS200, Laguna, sales, Statistics